While The Apprentice may not be as unconventional a biopic as intended, it did exceed the expectations that my aversion to the genre, my reluctance to devote two hours to what seemed an irrelevant and unattractive subject, and—however marginally—the negative comments I had intercepted in the ether since its Cannes premiere had fed. On my second attempt after buying and returning the ticket within a few hours on the day of its release, both lead performances made me soon realise it was worth having given it another chance. Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong imbue their roles with a disturbingly convincing sense of humanity without shying away from the most contemptible facets of their characters’ personae, nor yielding to the temptation of rendering farcical events even more so, thereby reducing the film to a redundant political scorn.
Splitting the story in two distinct parts, each identified by an iconic presidency and look—the first following a more structured narrative logic, the second being looser, messier, and slightly out of control, quite metaphorically so indeed—is per se a pretty interesting idea. It’s a shame, though, that technical impossibilities eventually led DP Kasper Tuxen to shoot digitally, faking both 16mm and analog video effects in post to largely perfectible results. A more stoic approach wouldn’t have changed the film, but would have at least added consistency to its aesthetics and artistic value to the project as such.
On another note—minor for most—the portrayal of Andy Warhol left me a little sceptical, but a clumsy young Trump not recognising him at a time when he was well into stardom, felt like a fairly paradoxical yet fitting touch of comedy.